Collapse of the Eastern Portico Earthquake
de Luca and Lena (2014:139) documented the collapse
of the eastern
portico in Area F, where excavation
revealed numerous architectural elements including
voussoirs, worked wall stones, and
corbels, together
with “a great quantity of fragments of wall plasters
with traces of paintings” in various colors, as well as
“coins and
potsherds from the 3rd–4th century A.D.”
On the basis of this assemblage and the nature of the
structural failure, they attributed the destruction to
the northern
Cyril earthquake of 363 CE. In a related discussion,
De Luca (2009:352) proposed that “the collapse and
relative abandonment of the buildings in sector H” was
“a consequence of the earthquake that affected the
region in 363 AD,” while at the same time stressing
that “the most precise chronological indicators seem
to stop around forty years earlier.” De Luca further
observed that across the entire excavation of Areas
H1, H2, and H3 there were “no finds from the
Byzantine period,” emphasizing that there was “not even a
single sherd,” a negative evidence pattern that might suggest an abrupt collapse followed by
abandonment rather than gradual decline.